Various absorbent fabric materials are used in surgical procedures for packing, wiping, and cleansing in or around the operating site. Typical products include surgical sponges such as 4.times.4 inch folded surgical gauze of nonwoven fabric, and woven, nonwoven and knitted laparotomy pads. Although standard operating room procedures require all materials brought into the operating area to be accounted for upon completion of the procedure, an occasional sponge may inadvertently be left in the patient. It is accordingly common practice in the medical field to include a radiopaque marker on all surgical sponges so that the presence or absence of a sponge in a patient experiencing difficulty after an operation can be determined by X-ray examination rather than by reoperating on the patient.
A common X-ray detectable marker used in conjunction with surgical sponges is a polymeric filament or ribbon loaded with an X-ray opaque filler material such as barium sulfate. Suitable polymeric materials include polyisobutylene, polyvinyl chloride and copolymers of vinyl acetate and vinyl chloride. Such X-ray detectable elements have been incorporated into sponge material by a variety of techniques. In the case of gauze swabs, a filament has been interwoven into the fabric of the gauze or fused to the surface of the fabric and folded into the sponge construction. In the case of laparotomy pads, an X-ray detectable ribbon has been enclosed in a seam stitched along one end of the pad or an X-ray detectable filament has been incorporated into the woven handle strap of the pad or into the body of the pad fabric. In the case of nonwoven fabric sponges the filament has been either heat fused onto the surface of the fabric or incorporated into the fabric by introducing the radiopaque element during the fabric manufacturing process.
In all cases, the X-ray detectable element has been preformed as a ribbon, yarn or monofilament and it has been essential to securely attach the element to the sponge fabric since if the element is separated from the fabric during use, not only is the fabric no longer visible by X-ray, but the separated element is easily lost in the surgical field. For manufacturing considerations it is desirable that the X-ray detectable marker be secured to the sponge in a continuous and reliable manner with a minimum of labor. A final consideration is that the X-ray detectable marker be easily identified in an X-ray image.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide an improved X-ray detectable marker on a surgical sponge. It is a further object of this invention to provide a surgical sponge having a distinctive and easily detected radiopaque marker. It is a yet further object to provide a method for applying a radiopaque marker to a fabric in a rapid, continuous and economical manner. These and other objects of the present invention will be apparent from the ensuing description and claims.